Every savings number on this site is defensible. This page documents the inputs, the exclusions, and the governance that procurement teams use to validate our cost-reduction claims before signing a master services agreement.
Savings % = (Vendor-direct annual support cost − GoVendorFree annual fee) ÷ Vendor-direct annual support cost
A defensible savings figure has exactly three inputs. Anything that does not fit inside one of these three belongs outside the calculation, clearly labelled as such.
We take the number from one of two places: the most recent renewal quote the client received from Oracle, SAP, Broadcom, or IBM, or — if no active quote exists — the last paid invoice broken down by licence line item. The baseline is agreed line by line with the client's procurement team in a joint workshop before any contract is signed.
We include: software maintenance / support fees for the in-scope product set, and standard indexation (vendor uplift assumptions when the quote is forward-looking).
We do not include: cloud subscription fees, hardware maintenance, professional services, net-new licence purchases, upgrades to new major releases, or one-off penalty payments arising from prior audits.
Our fee is fixed in the master services agreement, with contractual uplift terms capped well below typical vendor indexation. The fee covers severity-1 through severity-4 support, proactive performance tuning, tax and regulatory updates, global security patches, interoperability guidance, and custom-code support. A named service-delivery manager is included — not an add-on.
Most transitions carry no additional fee. Where the client requests a formal run-book, accelerated cut-over, or parallel-run period, the associated one-time cost is surfaced separately in the business case. It is never buried inside the savings percentage.
When a case study says "62% saving," it means the first full contract year reconciled savings — not a modelled assumption. Where we cite a range (for example, "50–90% savings"), the floor is the conservative transition year and the ceiling is a multi-year compound saving driven by vendor uplift avoidance.
The difference between 50% and 90% is driven by three variables. First, how generous the client's last vendor contract was — mature enterprise agreements with heavily discounted maintenance leave less room than list-price renewals. Second, product mix — Oracle Database maintenance compresses less than Oracle E-Business Suite maintenance, because the installed base is larger and the vendor's unit economics are tighter. Third, whether the client is avoiding upgrade-driven renewals (for example, running SAP ECC beyond 2027 mainstream maintenance) — that delta is counted as saving if and only if the client explicitly chose not to migrate.
Single-year percentage savings understate the economic reality. Each business case we produce includes a five-year net present value comparison at a discount rate the client's finance team chooses (typically 8–12%). The NPV model includes: baseline indexation (typically 4–8% vendor uplift), our contractual uplift cap, one-time transition costs if any, and the opportunity cost of any deferred vendor upgrade.
Every case study on this site has been signed off by the client's finance team before publication. Where a case study is anonymised, the anonymisation is at the client's request — the underlying reconciliation document exists and can be shown to a prospective client under NDA on request. We do not publish any saving number we cannot defend in a procurement review.
Under NDA, we will show the anonymised baseline invoice, the signed master services agreement fee schedule, and the year-one reconciliation report for any published case study. Send the request to our team and we will route it to the relevant engagement lead.
| Element | Vendor-direct proposals | GoVendorFree methodology |
|---|---|---|
| Baseline reference | Forward-looking list price with "discount" | Your actual paid invoice or active renewal quote |
| Indexation assumed | Often omitted, or low single digits | Real client-observed uplift (4–8%) |
| Cloud migration credit blended in | Typical | Never — surfaced separately |
| Bundled services counted as saving | Typical | Never — support-only comparison |
| Year-end reconciliation | Rare | Standard, finance-team signed |
We have walked away from engagements where the realistic year-one saving sat below 35–40%. Our floor number on this site is 50% because below that, the risk of change — for most clients — outweighs the reward. If we cannot get a client above that threshold, we say so in the initial assessment rather than push a weak business case.
Yes. Our fee uplift is capped contractually. The vendor-direct alternative carries 4–8% annual uplift historically. The gap widens year over year.
The contract includes a quarterly true-up mechanism. If you consolidate, the fee adjusts downward. If you expand in scope, the fee increases proportionally — and the increase is documented inside the agreement, not discovered at renewal.
Yes. Your perpetual licences, your patches, your data — you retain everything. We document the switch-back process in the master services agreement. No lock-in.
A free baseline assessment takes 45 minutes. Bring your renewal quote or last paid invoice. We will produce a defendable savings number using this exact methodology.
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